SentaiBrad

In the other thread I talk about a bit why we currently don't have a trial too.

https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/noobs/is-there-a-bigbox-mode-trial-available#p14720

Well I do the tutorials for our channel, so I fiddle with stuff quite a lot. I just never bothered with the Menu or looked at it once and just thought meh, I don't need this I am at my PC! I only use the controller to play the games.

No, the import processes needs to run 1 at a time. If we allowed for multiple to run there would be even bigger performance concerns. The large amount of games is probably the cause of it. That amount of data, unless you have blazing fast internet and the server gave you full bandwidth, is just going to take a while to download. You can import with minimal amount of extra data at the start and then use the 'Download Images and Metadata' option in the Context Menu. You can either do all of your imported systems or just 1 at a time. Click a game, Ctrl + A to highlight them all, then Tools -> Download Images and Metadata. I would also suggest clicking the option to only download metadata for missing sections so nothing gets re-downloaded.

Walrus13 said Hi Playpopo, I was the same as you, looking for a trail before laying down the money for Bigbox. What i can tell you is that after making the purchase Bigbox has exceeded all my expectations and runs flawlessly. I would also be happy to answer any queries you have about it, but as someone who has toyed with other frontends like hyperspin, Bigbox is 100 times easier to setup and a joy to use :) Thank you for the kind words, we greatly appreciate it.

CADScott said SentaiBrad said As far as I know I did nothing to change the exclusive mode thing, just one day it stopped acting up. My solution was to end explorer.exe in Task Manager though with Steam closed. With Explorer closed I would plug in the controller, re-boot explorer in Task Manager. If it wasn't exclusive at that point, I unplugged it, closed explorer, plugged it in, waited a few seconds, then turned back on explorer. With InputMapper open with Explorer closed it might not update the log properly sometimes, but it would say even before explorer was back on if it was in exclusive mode. So sometimes the first attempt wouldn't work but the second would, like it needed a flush. This is more or less the problem though, it was a Windows update that kind of broke it and I assumed another Windows update fixed it. I am using Windows 10 as well. That was my experience with InputMapper, it seemed to need a lot of intervention when it wasn't working properly, which made it very difficult for a PC which was not meant to have a mouse and keyboard attached. I was almost tempted to go back to Windows 7 and try it, because from what I have seen most of the issues are due to Windows 10 and exclusive mode. Yep, but I don't know what to tell you, it's pretty much never a problem for me anymore. I can't explain it.

CliveBarker said Couldn't be possible to revoke(editing it) the XML license remotely? Not without a giant security hole or a breach of trust. We try really hard to also provide a no DRM experience as well, which is what that would be under, more or less it checking in to the server from the internet and Jason also deems that a breach of trust.

fromlostdays said There is another option for exiting retroarch at least. Since, you're using the same controller I am, I'll tell you exactly how I do it. Left Thumbstick = Enable Hotkeys This feature is absolutely great, as it allows you to map emulator functions over any button you want. So if I depress my left thumbstick Start = Exit RetroArch Right Bumper = Fastforward Y = Screenshot Right stick up and down = Scroll through cheats X = Use cheat A = Savestate Select = Load state (you'll want to map loading state to a difficult combination of buttons so you don't accidentally load state in the middle of a game. When my left thumbstick is not depressed, all the buttons go back to normal. Just go from the second RA menu down to inputs, and instead of clicking "User 1 Hotkey Binds" go to "Input Hotkey Binds". Bind a button to the "Enable Hotkeys" option, and bind the rest however you want, including exiting the emulator. How did I miss this! That is really awesome, holy crap.

As far as I know I did nothing to change the exclusive mode thing, just one day it stopped acting up. My solution was to end explorer.exe in Task Manager though with Steam closed. With Explorer closed I would plug in the controller, re-boot explorer in Task Manager. If it wasn't exclusive at that point, I unplugged it, closed explorer, plugged it in, waited a few seconds, then turned back on explorer. With InputMapper open with Explorer closed it might not update the log properly sometimes, but it would say even before explorer was back on if it was in exclusive mode. So sometimes the first attempt wouldn't work but the second would, like it needed a flush. This is more or less the problem though, it was a Windows update that kind of broke it and I assumed another Windows update fixed it. I am using Windows 10 as well.

Unfortunately one doesn't exist and is a little hard for us to enforce. I am however more than willing to answer any questions that you may have about it.

CADScott said slvc said Just an update! I got the computer up and running, hooked to the TV, and SNES through Retroarch working. I'm using my Xbox 1 controller (god is the D-pad awful) and it automapped it pretty well for me. I think the next steps are as follows: 1) Figure out how to exit Retroarch using the controller as I won't have a mouse/keyboard when build is finished 2) Map controller to mouse/keyboard for selecting games in what will eventually be BigBox mode Does Launchbox support point 2 at all? Where I can avoid using a mapper? If I can figure out how to do everything using the controllers I'd be happy, even if it means manually setting configurations for each emulator... it's the actual selecting/launching/exiting a game that I struggle with. Years ago I mapped something to my Dualshock 3 and it was horrible to set up so I'm trying to see the easiest route.. Thank you @fromlostdays and @CADScott !! I'm only looking to get one controller set up for now, I'll worry about two later ha Both of those steps are very easy in BigBox, exiting the emulator is setup in the settings area, and is done by pressing 2 buttons at the same time, usually start and select. You should not need any mapping software in BigBox, everything is selectable by using a controller, that is what BigBox is built for, controller only use from a couch! Yep, even LB to an extent has controller support for navigation, but obviously BB is more ideally suited.

Have you seen any good data on Sandisk SSD's? They're all I buy in terms of SD Cards and Thumb drives, and SSD's are essentially cracked out versions of SD cards.

Also, after reading a few of the posts, I use InputMapper with my PS4 controller and only had issues for a little while with InputMapper not getting exclusive control over my controller, which only effected Kodi. That only lasted a month or two and I had a workaround anyways, but before and after that it has worked completely flawlessly. InputMapper is really super simple. Not as simple as plugging in an Xbox Controller and it just automatically downloading the drivers, but even those drivers are screwed up from Microsoft so it's not ideal either. As per RocketLauncher, my personal opinion is to just stay away from it, there really is no need to use it. Especially now that LB has archive support honestly. That's just me though, there doesn't need to be a second layer, but some users like to utilize it and there is nothing wrong with that.

Do you mean the OG Xbox controller? The Xbox One controller's D-pad is supposed to be really good actually. I use my PS4 controller currently and my 360 and PS3 controllers in the past, the PS3 and PS4 d-pad's are superior by far to the OG Xbox and 360 pad. As for the rest, you'll want to search up the AutoHotKey (in LB) scripts on the forums if you want to exit the emulators from the controller. LaunchBox and BigBox will use a controller to navigate around but obviously BigBox is better with this. You'll still need a mouse and keyboard in the long run when you need to edit settings. You ideally never need to use re-mapping software unless the Emulator you use doesn't support controllers (not the case with RA) or you want to control the PC outside of LB/BB.

No that's awesome Scott, I certainly can't know everything all the time, so if someone else has already done that type of research then it is certainly worth sharing. The Samsung Evo 850 has been at the top of my wishlist for SSD's. I already knew to stay away from anything PNY or other cheap manufactures (I've had so many of those PNY thumb drives fail so fast), but specific numbers is good.

The forum doesn't like backslashes for some reason. As for what could be the issue, I honestly have no clue. From the outside looking in you have everything set up correctly, but we know for a fact it is an error between LB and RA if they work outside of LB.

I've played around with it on my Kindle Fire HD 10" (Late 2015, the $220 one), but RA has a lot more under the hood than the stand alones I am sure, so potentially you are running out of RAM or your phones CPU is having issues. I can suggest a few things, but there is no guarantee it will work, I also don't have my tablet on me, I had to exchange it for another one so I don't have the exact names on me right now, Wednesday or Thursday after I restore my backup I will. Never run a RAM Cleaner, you don't want an app like that to reside in ram and try and regulate everything that would be bad. Assuming you're rooted, Droid Optimizer was good to set a performance governor on the CPU, make the CPU run faster. Of course, this will kill your battery faster though so you'll want to turn it off afterwards. There are several game launchers, and I don't remember the one I use personally, but it makes games like The Tribez, Family Guy Quest for Stuff and Simpsons Tapped Out run a lot more smoothly. You launch the game through that and it closes processes and other apps to provide more horse power to the app. Otherwise there are some RA specific settings you can change, but if you look up emulator guides and RA guides they might know exactly what to change. I don't know all the settings off hand and I do our tutorial series. For the most part they should be similar. At the end of the day, your phone or tablet may have less power than you need for an optimal experience with RA, like I said they probably take more resources because they do a lot more than the average single system or single system family emulators.

Antropus said I wish I could have the wizard ready, but I cannot promise anything with the crazy busy family life + full time job I have :) I need to be careful during the migration so things don't break and I only had 3 days working on and off the wizard. It will happen, just possibly not in this time frame, I'm afraid. Well I forgot I have a Dentist appointment tomorrow, when I am supposed to be testing things, and I will be loopy all day after that. MAME is going to require some serious time for testing and I want both MAME importers to be in the best shape they can be, so chances are I will go with something less demanding this week.

DOS76 said Personally I wouldn't want to be writing all of those temp files to your SSD over and over again that it just putting wear and tear on the drive and over the long run can shorten the life of the drive. Yea I agree, don't do that to your SSD. Honestly, don't archive large games, they'll take forever. We honestly suggest most users just archive games up to the N64 and GBA, maybe even the Nintendo DS. Any disc based system or very large files will just take a long time, dependent on your PC.

WinUAE may not support archived games (I don't know if they need to be or not), and what problems with the command line are you having? If WinUAE requires command line arguments to function then just copy and paste them in to the default command line parameter for the Emulator in LB.

CADScott said From what I have seen there is only one CD-I emulator that is actually working well and compatible with most games, cdiemu, and it is paid software, costing 25 euro. I have not used it, but it does have a time limited trial, so it would be worth trying. Sadly it's not at all worth it and not compatible with most games.

Also, no I'm not doing a tutorial on MESS, it's a joke. The MAME Tutorial is coming, but it's not going to give anything new in the way of MESS.

Yes MESS is the suggested Emulator which sucks because it's a MESS. CDiEmu is the alternative but not suggested. There's not much to be done sadly. From EmuGen "Comparisons Cdiemu is payware that hasn't been updated since 2006. Its compatibility isn't very good and it only responds to mouse movements for control, making most games unplayable unless you use an additional program called Mah Boi. MESS has support for CD-i, which is also incomplete, but much easier to control, and it actually emulates better audio than Cdiemu in some cases. It is recommended to start the emulation with the game already loaded, either with the game picker or through a soft reset after mounting the disk."

Yes, but unless you remove WMP mp3's play just fine automatically. Video's are more of a wild west with a hit and miss record, hence hte need for VLC that should hopefully make it 100% as well.

Well then if that's the case that's fine. If he is asking for a rom pack however then we can not share that.